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The Landscape Colonized

In the Bahamas the same colonial model of dominance, hegemony, and the apparent subordinance and submission of the colonized is an occurrence still being perpetuated in the country – albeit with slightly different agents. In regards to the physical landscape, the occupation and exploitation of space and resources that we associate with the colonial era and empire, and that which we associate with monarchies laying claim to a space, is now being exacted by multinational companies. These companies make rather advantageous use of the vulnerability and lack of influences of countries such as the Bahamas and their need for ‘development’ and improved infrastructure of third-world and developing nations in our globalizing spread of capitalism. From the outside, it often seems a symbiotic sort of relationship and an even give and take – however, this is often not the case.

There is obvious unfulfillment in looking at the site and the promises of development during the filming of Disney’s ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ in the Bahamas and its negative effect on the landscape and the fault on the side of both the government and the company for these detrimental effects and unfulfilled promises. It is in this way that I disagree with the ‘post’ prefix to colonization – its very nature of dominance is still very much present to those small, struggling countries like the Bahamas.

Image taken from eroded beach adjacent to the tank, showing the remains of what was a pirate ship prop.